Category: Daily Cryptic

25:44 .. Quite tricky in parts, but plenty of satisfying moments. I only realised after agreeing to step in and blog this that I couldn’t untangle the wordplay for 5 down. Answers on a postcard, … Read more “Times 24,186 (Mar 30th) – Kingdom for a Norse”

Solving time: 5:43 This would have been quicker if I’d known the name at 1/29/19dn instead of having to work it out from the crossing letters! Whether Mr Hopkins’ output was any good or not … Read more “ST 4321 (Sun 22 Mar) – Metre reading”

I was surprised this took me nearly an hour. I started off very confidently in the SW corner having noted there were lots of multi-word answers elsewhere which I thought would fall into place quickly … Read more “Times 24184 – Phew!”

Solving time : Didn’t get a chance to do this in one sitting, 30 minutes of real time with about four short solving spurts. I did find this difficult to get a run of clues … Read more “Times 24183 – souped-up ptarmigan”

Solving time: 14:10 The SW corner was the hardest part of this for me – pretty blank when the rest was filled in. 14 and 13 were both new words for me. 4, 19, 7 … Read more “Times 24182”

Solving time : 30 minutes A melange of good and not so good, easy and difficult with one obscure wordplay at 3D and a couple of excellent clues ar 7D and 16D. I had no … Read more “Times 24181 It’s Giovanni Again”

Solving time: 24 minutes. I did it all apart from 18a in about 16 minutes, so thought I was going to get another really fast time. Mostly this was quite easy – quite a few … Read more “Times Crossword 24180”

Solving time: 6:25 After last week things could only improve. I’m not really a fan of this setter’s rather loose style but the majority of the nitpicks below are quibbles rather than complaints. I suspect … Read more “ST 4320 (Sun 15 Mar) – Backwards analysis”

Solving time: I was disturbed twice while solving this one and didn’t manage to steer the stopwatch successfully through the stops and starts, but I’d guess it took me around 15 minutes, and that this … Read more “Times Crossword 24178”

Solving time: 25 mins with one missing I think this was a tricky puzzle, but I made heavy weather of it. In the end, after spending several minutes working out the difficult 27A, I simply … Read more “Times 24177”